yanyi

@yanyiii.com

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writer

The title of the book is set in large white type on the cover of the book. The cover includes two femme-presenting people wearing bright clothing in red, maroon, and pink with bright yellow flowers.
The book is black with white writing on a wood table.
how we choose to interpret life and death is not neutral; interpretation itself is always strategic. Some interpretations are more politically and personally enabling than others. I think of this when I write my dreams down in the morning. When I had this dream I thought, Here is the destroyed world, and here-beyond the threshold—is the luminous world. Simone Weil says that the greatest calamity the human race can experience is the destruction of a city. That's where I was: walking through a destroyed city. But ... the luminous tree!
SONG FROM ANOTHER TIME A song from another time survived with me. It follows me wherever I go. It rushes after me. I crumple it up, a small piece of paper, and throw it away. But I peel the paper open and smooth it out whenever I remember one of my dead friends.
Screenshot from the newsletter. "I think about all the advice I gave on this newsletter in those two short-long years. I miss giving advice, but I also wonder if there was more advice to give, and perhaps I had answered all the questions that I could answer? Because, after all, whatever your question, my answer is a question that only you can answer. Does it honor life? Do you possess your life enough to know how to honor it? What would it take to do that?"
In the Middle of This Decade In the middle of this decade, we turned and walked the same direction. I held your hand and didn’t look at the war you thought would kill me. The last good year had a memory of cheeseburgers: I ate them sitting on grass or rock emptying paper of meaning. You walked with me and then, still, we could stop the fighting. I had not yet closed death’s eyes with my lips. Your mouth was not yet familiar.
Photo of Muriel Leung and I in front of a large black sign in white letters that says Third Place Books Lake Forest Park, Ravenna, and Seward Park. We are holding up her new novel!
A patch of grass that is mostly frost in the shade and green in the sun.